Admissions Requirements

ADVANCED CERTIFICATE

If you are interested in the Advanced Certificate program, you should:

Hold a master’s degree in a relevant field from an accredited institution;

Hold an undergraduate degree in a relevant field and be currently employed in a position related to the CUSP mission

Your academic and professional experience need not be in a field directly linked to cities and urban issues. It is more important that you can demonstrate rigorous prior academic training and a passion for applying analytical skills to problem-solving in an urban context.

In addition to a strong academic record and test scores, successful applicants typically have an undergraduate or masters degree in science, mathematics, engineering, or in the social sciences, along with the aptitude and inspiration to apply quantitative and mathematics skills to the betterment of urban life. In the past, we have also had competitive applicants who have obtained these skills through online courses or work experience.

We are looking for people from ALL disciplines who would like to apply their quantitative skills to pressing social issues. We recommend that applicants have some familiarity with:

Single-variable calculus

Basic programming (Python and R)

Statistics and probability

Geographic information systems and spatial analytics

Basic computer science

There are many free online courses that our students take to augment or refresh their technical skills in these topics before applying. We suggest the following free online courses:

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CUSP is a unique public-private research center that uses New York City as its laboratory and classroom to help cities around the world become more productive, livable, equitable, and resilient. CUSP observes, analyzes, and models cities to optimize outcomes, prototype new solutions, formalize new tools and processes, and develop new expertise/experts. These activities will make CUSP the world’s leading authority in the emerging field of “Urban Informatics.”